


won't be anyone around

by seventhswan



Series: Personal Top Three [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Sexism, Tabloids, let's give them something to talk about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you want to go out sometime?” Darcy blurts. She raises her big blue eyes to meet Natasha’s. “I mean, if you haven’t just isolated me from the herd so you can exterminate me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	won't be anyone around

**Author's Note:**

> I love this pairing, unlikely as it is. Warning for: casual tabloid sexism.

“Eighth one this month,” Steve says, his mouth all flat with sympathy. He says it before Natasha has to do anything else but slap the magazine down on the table, the lurid cover photograph leaking out, acid bright, between her fingers.

Natasha huffs a hard breath through her nose, pulls out a chair and sits. Steve drags his spoon through his oatmeal, making little patterns. Natasha imagines he’s probably setting up and then discarding comforting things to say to her.

“Want a bowl?” he offers, finally. Natasha’s eyes are closed – she’s going into the place deep inside herself where she has an army of dragons which torch everything that’s – well, just everything. She tried yogic breathing, before, but nothing works as well as this.

She can hear Steve getting a bowl down from the cupboard and futzing around with the tinned peaches before she even nods. That’s why if she was going to go _there_ with any of her teammates, it’d be Steve. Today’s article hadn’t made such a bad guess then, really. Better than last week’s attempt, though at least Tony had enjoyed that – he’d practically laughed up a lung, and then told JARVIS to mock up his and Natasha's wedding photograph. JARVIS had, at least, used the most pissed-off picture of Natasha in existence. She appreciated that.

“Want me to burn it?” Bucky asks, as he pulls out the chair beside her. There’s a soft _swish_ as he pulls the magazine towards himself, and then a dramatic crumpling noise as it gets the full treatment from his metal arm. Natasha doesn’t quite smile, but the left side of her mouth tucks up, and she knows they know what she means.

|

Even with the magazine safely destroyed by Bucky, and with a bowl of warm oatmeal in her stomach, Natasha is still picturing the magazine cover while she works out that afternoon. 

Natasha has come up against much tougher, of course she has – bullet wounds, and missions lasting weeks and _weeks_ , murder after murder – but this, _this_ is still so exhausting. She’s tired of being photographed ass-first at disaster scenes, of grainy shots of her laughing at a colleague’s elbow having lurid captions like WHO IS OUR LADY AVENGER GETTING COSY WITH AT HEADQUARTERS?? splashed over them. 

She’s just a person, trying to do a job. It’s – it’s demeaning, and embarrassing, and she hated the look on Steve’s face when he mumbled about how _you know, Natasha, if it wasn’t for Buck, I’d pretend anything to get them off your back_. He didn’t look at her, kept his eyes trained on his hands as he taped them up, but she’d felt the sincerity radiating off him. It was awful.

She punches the bag so hard it rebounds and hits the wall, juddering away from her, creaking on the chain.

“Holy –“ someone says, and Natasha whips around to see Jane’s assistant standing at the door to the gym, carrying a coffee in each hand, her eyes so wide they could practically roll down her cheeks. Natasha turns back to the bag so she can grin to herself, a little. Jane’s assistant – Darcy, her name is, it comes to Natasha all of a sudden – doesn’t come around to the tower too often, but when she does, it’s prime entertainment for Natasha. She’s just – all smart mouth and big doe eyes and bravado that, for some reason, completely deserts her in Natasha’s presence.

Natasha turns back and cracks her neck delicately, raising her right arm over her head in a totally unnecessary stretch. Her sports bra creeps even higher on her stomach. Darcy’s eyes zero in like there’s literally nothing else she can do.

“Looking for something?” Natasha asks, voice pitched a little lower than normal. Darcy visibly swallows.

“Um, no!” she says. She jerks her arms almost hard enough to spill the coffee. It’s as though she tries to touch her glasses but remembers just in time what she’s carrying. “I just – er – coffee, lab. You know, scientists and their, uh, coffee. I’ll be – I’ll going that way, now. To science. I mean, to the lab. Um, bye!”

Natasha doesn’t cackle once the gym’s door swings closed, but she comes close.

|

Tony’s being honored at some big charity benefit next week, and he’s extended the invitation to all of them.

“It’ll be excruciatingly boring, most likely,” he says, shrugging. “Buuut the caterers they’re getting, _man_. You’ve never had shrimp like – actually, you may never have had _food_ before. I swear. The spread was so good last year I woke up chewing my pillow for weeks –“

“He did,” Pepper adds dryly, without looking up from keying something important into her personal organiser. Probably a conference call with Obama and the Dalai Lama, or something equally ridiculous. 

Natasha had dismissed it at the time, figuring she’d stay in and do – well, anything else, frankly – but now she’s reconsidering. If they’re going to talk about her, they can go ahead and talk about her. It’ll just be on _her_ terms.

The lab is on the seventeenth floor. While the lift is ascending she waits to have some misgivings, but it doesn’t happen. Maybe she’s just _that_ righteously angry.

Bruce looks up from the latest huge glowing thing he’s working on, and his face splits into a smile at the sight of her. Jane looks more surprised, and Darcy looks utterly stricken. Maybe Natasha’s a bad person.

“Natasha,” Bruce says warmly, motioning to her to come closer. He’s always ridiculously excited when someone other than Tony takes interest in what’s going on in the lab.

“Sorry, Bruce,” she says. “I just need Darcy.”

Darcy looks like she doesn’t know whether to pee herself in fear or expire with happiness. It’s an interesting look on her but then, Natasha has to admit, most looks are. 

“Some other time, then,” Bruce says, smiling in his self-deprecating way. Natasha winks at him. If she was going to be the kind of person who ranks the members of her ersatz family group – and let’s be real, she completely _is_ \- Bruce is her favorite even moreso than Steve.

“Definitely,” she says, meaning it.

She then crooks her index finger at Darcy, once, and heads out of the lab doors.

“I didn’t know you even knew my name,” Darcy says, when they’re in the corridor outside. Natasha blinks, a little taken aback.

“I know your name,” she says immediately. It doesn’t quite come out defensive. Sure, she referred to her as ‘science sidekick’ in her head for a good few months, before Jane’s name stuck and she was able to change to ‘Jane’s assistant’. But she knows it now. Darcy. Daaaarcy. It’s a weird name.

“Seems that way,” Darcy says lightly, shoving her hands in her pockets. She’s always wearing so many layers, and so much unnecessary material – hats and scarves, jangly bracelets and rubber bands. It makes her look like she’s trying to hide something – just as much, Natasha supposes ruefully, as her uniform is hiding for her. 

Darcy’s smiling a little, looking at the ground, probably getting a good eyeful of Natasha’s ankles and nothing else. Natasha distantly hopes they look appropriately alluring. She opens her mouth to say something, but is hopelessly beat to the punch.

“Do you want to go out sometime?” Darcy blurts. She raises her bright eyes to meet Natasha’s. “I mean, if you haven’t just isolated me from the herd so you can exterminate me?”

She considers this, wrinkling her nose up.

“And, in fact, if you _are_ here to exterminate me, could you just say yes first? Then I could die happy and not horribly embarrassed.”

Natasha opens her mouth, then closes it again. Then opens it.

“Is that what you think I do? Exterminate people?” she teases. At least, she hopes it comes out that way.

Darcy grins, shrugs one shoulder.

“What do you do?” she asks, and an answering grin steals over Natasha’s mouth.

“You got me there,” Natasha admits. Darcy’s practically glowing, leaning towards Natasha like she’s magnetized. Natasha wants to lean in, too. They’re quiet for a second, and Darcy’s glow dials back a little.

“Not that I’m not, uh, enjoying this little round of banter with the most dangerous woman I’ve ever been anywhere near, but. Um. The thing I asked? Do you want to?” she asks. Her hands are actually shaking minutely – not enough to rattle her bracelets, but enough for Natasha to see.

“Yes,” Natasha says simply. Because, she finds, she actually does. She’d kind of – she’d been hoping she could get photographed at the benefit being the subject of Darcy’s doe eyes, and take some of the heat off the boys. The press would enjoy writing about Darcy – young, excitable, a bombshell in a ballgown on Natasha’s arm. She’d give snappy quotes, too. And it would just be _nice_ to know in advance what the magazine covers would say.

She’d pictured a Darcy who’d barely be able to open her mouth, though – not one brave enough to look her in the eye and ask her first. Darcy’s eyes are huge, like she’s been winded.

“Really?” she squeaks, and immediately clears her throat. “Um, I mean, cool, great.” She shoves a hand back through her unruly dark hair, and smiles.

“So, what did you want to tell me, anyway?” she asks. The glow’s back. Natasha wants to move closer to her, to see how warm she is.

“You – “ Natasha stalls, eyes flicking up and down Darcy for inspiration. She doesn’t want, now, to admit what it really was – she’s curious to see how things go this way, instead. Thankfully, her eyes snag on something perfect.

“You missed a button,” Natasha says, pointing to just below her own bust. Darcy, predictably, goes into half a flap.

“Crap,’ she says, scrambling with clumsy fingers to do it up. She giggles a little.

“Thanks for not announcing it right in front of Bruce and Jane,” she says. “They already think I’m enough of a goofball.”

She makes a face again, backpedalling.

“Well, I mean, Jane already _knows_ I am, but I think I still have some dignity around Bruce. A little. Worth preserving.”

She sighs, smoothing the front of her shirt down with her palms.

“Well,” she says, “I have to go. Science is calling.”

“Extermination,” Natasha says, in a deliberately flat voice. “Ditto.”

She’s rewarded with Darcy’s laugh, delighted and unexpectedly soft.

|

It occurs to Natasha too late that she didn’t get Darcy’s number, or hand out her own. Of course, by then she’s painting her toenails in her room and it’s dark outside her windows. Work in the lab stopped hours ago, as Bruce made it back for dinner at a relatively reasonable time – before Tony, anyway.

So she just paints on another coat, and doesn’t think about it.

\- until, of course, she’s surprised by a string of texts at breakfast the next morning.

**got your number from bruce, hope that’s okay?**

**ugh I think the guy who lives above me has a secret passion for michael flatley, but only between the hours of 6 and 7 am**

**what I don’t understand is how you can riverdance to showtunes**

**dude you can’t dance, and the sun is NOT coming out for you tomorrow**

**I just tried to thump the ceiling with a broom and it fell apart in my hands**

**:(**

There is, then, a photograph sent to Natasha’s phone of a polka-dotted broom handle lying dejectedly separate from the brush part, on what Natasha assumes is Darcy’s kitchen floor. It’s stupid, but she snorts a little laugh, just under her breath.

She doesn’t even need superior peripheral vision to see Sam elbowing Steve on the other side of the table. Because she _has_ it, she can see Bucky and Sam grinning at each other behind their hands. They think they’re being subtle, sadly.

“Nice to see you smiling, Nat,” Steve says, because he _would_ say an old grandfathery thing like that, and he doesn’t care about being subtle.

Natasha deliberately turns her phone face down on the table and goes back to her breakfast, full of dignity. The boys keep smirking.

|

Darcy keeps up a string of messages throughout the day, in that same unfiltered, unselfconscious style. Natasha isn’t much for texting, but she sends a photo or two, so that Darcy will know she’s listening.

Bruce smiles his little distracted smile when Natasha snaps their reflections in one of the enormous glass beakers he has stationed around the lab. They look strange, slightly warped, against the blue liquid.

“Who are you sending it to?” he asks.

“Darcy,” Natasha says, after she thinks for a second or two about lying. Bruce brightens, stands up a little straighter, flattens an unruly curl with one hand.

“Well then,” he says, sliding a little closer to Natasha, “let’s take another for her.”

|

Darcy isn’t going to be back at the Tower before they go on their date. She texts a photo of a pile of poli sci textbooks and then a shot of her exaggeratedly sad face.

Natasha’s getting bizarrely used to having Darcy as a constant companion. She trains with Bucky and Steve, or Sam in the evenings after he gets back from work, and then she has messages waiting for her when she collects her bag from the side. It doesn’t matter that her mind’s a little bit somewhere else when she trains – she lands blows, turns on a dime, gets her knee in Steve’s windpipe just as well whether her brain’s 100% on the task or just ninety – but they notice. Bucky seems to be bursting to tease her pretty much whenever they’re together, but keeps glancing at Steve, like they’ve made some kind of accord about it.

Friday rolls around and Natasha feels ridiculous, sitting in the lounge on the common floor and waiting for JARVIS to announce Darcy’s approach. It’s like she’s a teenager again. Well, more like she’s a normal teenager for the first time, maybe.

She could have done without the audience tough – Bucky and Steve are on the next sofa, peacefully smushed together as always, and Bruce seems to be doing his best to distract Tony, for which Natasha is grateful. She kind of wishes Clint was here, and not away on a mission – he can always be relied on to make a stupid joke, make light of the obvious.

Darcy insisted on coming to pick Natasha up, even though Natasha reasoned that it’d probably be easier to just meet somewhere. _I asked you_ was all Darcy said in return. Natasha kind of likes that little stubborn streak.

JARVIS announces _Ms Lewis is approaching the main door_ , and then the wait as she takes the elevator up is _terrible_. Nobody says anything.

Darcy arrives at the door with a… big box, actually. She’s wearing a huge black hat. Natasha feels the sudden urge to kiss her.

“Hellooo, beautiful,” Darcy says, and then pinkens high up on her cheekbones like she can’t quite believe she just said that. She glances over Natasha’s shoulder.

“… and, um, everyone else?” she hedges. Tony waves at her obnoxiously. Bruce makes a face like he’s dying.

“Sorry,” Natasha offers. Steve and Bucky seem, at least, to be trying to camouflage themselves on the couch cushions. “My associates are terrible gawkers.”

“Associates?” Tony squawks. “Jesus, Natasha, that’s _cold_.”

“Ass-o-ci-ates,” she repeats, inflectionless. Tony sprawls back over the sofa with a hand clasped to his chest like she’s wounded him. Darcy clears her throat.

“Well, anyway, I brought you – well, first I thought flowers, right, because, you know. Flowers, date. But _then_ I figured, hmm, probably not so much a flower girl, right? So then I thought - _knives_. A bouquet of _knives_ ,” Darcy says.

Bucky is nodding, very sagely, in the corner of Natasha’s eye.

“But _then_ I figured, there’s no way I can get you better knives than you already have. So! Well, you always have your nails painted so nice, it was one of the first things I noticed about you, back when we first met. I always – really liked it, because it was so unexpected. So, long story short, I brought you some nail polishes. I hope they aren’t too close to colors you already have.”

She offers the box firmly, clearly nervous but trying to play it off. Natasha feels curiously warm all over.

“You shouldn’t have brought me anything,” is all she can think of to say. Darcy noticed such a small thing about Natasha? She was already looking that closely, even when Natasha couldn’t remember her name?

Darcy beams.

“Well, you agreed to come out with me, and you’re letting me pick the restaurant and everything, right? So, it’s fair.”

Natasha’s… not entirely sure that really pans out, but she can let it go. Darcy looks so pleased with herself.

“She’s a keeper,” Tony manages to say before he gets what looks like a terribly painful elbow in the gut from Bruce.

“Thanks for the advice,” Natasha says dryly, and then, blessedly, it’s time to leave.

|

The restaurant is Ethiopian, tucked away in a little neighborhood Natasha hasn’t been to often.

“I figured, you know, eating with fingers, we’re already going to be messy, so you won’t notice when I totally drop something on myself,” Darcy says, when their food arrives. “Seriously, give me thirty seconds. It’s inevitable.”

“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” Natasha says. The restaurant is cozy but not nauseatingly date-like – lots of the other tables are just full of groups of friends, students, laughing in the low light.

Darcy rolls her eyes and swallows her mouthful.

“Only like, _every day_ ,” she says, and offers Natasha some of her food.

Darcy shows Natasha photographs of her cat, and laughs at Natasha’s stories in all the right places (and sometimes in the wrong ones – that makes Natasha laugh too, seeing funny sides where she hadn’t considered them before). She looks vulnerable in the candlelight, somehow, and then Natasha realises why – she’s wearing fewer layers than Natasha has ever seen her in. Her blouse is voiley, the material more a suggestion than anything. Natasha can see her skin underneath.

“What made you ask me to come here?” Natasha asks suddenly, during dessert. It’s been bothering her all night.

Darcy colors.

“Well… I’ve had a crush on you since we met, I don’t know if you noticed,” she says. Natasha wrinkles her nose semi-apologetically.

“I noticed,” she says, and Darcy sighs.

“I know, I know,” she says, sounding embarrassed, “ _aliens_ knew about it. Actually, in fact, that’s not even an exaggeration, aliens _did_ know about it, Thor knew about it – he worked it out by himself, and that’s when I thought oh great, everyone must know.”

She sighs, and sips her tea. Her fingers are long and pale, clasped around the dark cup.

“So, I thought – well, I like her, you know, and I want it to go somewhere, and I thought, if I don’t say something, how’s that ever going to happen?”

It’s simple, and brave. She looks right into Natasha’s eyes. Her eyes look black in the light. Natasha holds her gaze for a few seconds, then looks down at her plate.

|

They walk back through the park, under the streetlamps. It’s a curiously warm night.

“You know, it’s a shame,” Darcy sighs finally. It’s almost enough to make Natasha stop in her tracks.

Once Darcy sees she’s got Natasha’s attention, she goes on.

“I had this stupid sophomore-ish fantasy of kissing you on your stoop,” she sighs. “But you don’t have one, and under the loving gaze of the Tower security cameras doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it.”

Natasha finds herself momentarily with nothing to say. It’s not such a bad feeling.

“But, you know,” Darcy says, stopping Natasha under a streetlight and drawing close, “I think we can make do.”

|

Well, that’s torn it.

|

“I’ve made a big mistake,” Natasha tells Bruce in the lab the next day, while she hands him something long and hideously breakable. She’s been hiding in there all morning, because Tony keeps singing old love standards in this cod-operatic voice whenever he sees her, and Steve is actually giving her these concerned glances. Sam keeps making a face like he’s about to ask her how it went, and _no_ , she isn’t in the mood.

“Okay,” Bruce says. He sounds like he’s been waiting for hours for her to talk. He’s frowning at some glutinous aquamarine concoction, but Natasha knows he can focus on more than one thing at once.

“With Darcy,” she qualifies. She picks up and then replaces an empty beaker. Her hands feel all jittery.

Bruce frowns more.

“It didn’t go well?” he asks the beaker. “It seemed to start well.”

“It went _too_ well,” Natasha admits.

“Oh,” Bruce says, in a tone that lets her know he understands exactly what she means.

“It's just that all I wanted was to get my own back on the press. I wanted to know what they were going to say before they said it. And Darcy was single, so it wasn’t going to hurt anyone else. And I thought if it was her, she’d make it amusing, but I didn’t think I’d – I didn’t think…” she trails off, feeling awkward. This whole thing is awkward. She darts a little paranoid glance around the room to make sure that Bruce – and, okay, JARVIS, but JARVIS is all right – is the only one hearing this.

“So she really likes you,” Bruce says, pulling off his gloves and turning to Natasha, “and you like her more than you thought. Sounds okay to me.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Natasha says. She can’t – be the kind of person Darcy needs. Can’t love her without complications, without the little stunted parts of her getting a painful, embarrassing airing.

“Won’t know until you try,” Bruce says. Natasha is just chewing this over when several beakers explode, and all her thoughts are drowned out by the lab’s alarm.

|

Darcy sends her twelve texts over the course of the day, but Natasha, overwhelmed, ignores them. 

Steve progresses from concerned faces to actually baking the little blueberry cookies that are Natasha’s favorites. It’s a considerable improvement, and she methodically eats ten of them under the kitchen lights by herself, just after eleven.

|

“Nothing’s easy when you want it,” Sam tells her the next morning, when they’re sparring in the gym.

“Did Bruce send you?” Natasha squints suspiciously. Sam shakes his head, grinning, and punches her playfully on the arm with no force.

“No,” he says. “You just look that bad.”

“Thanks,” Natasha says, and kicks his legs straight out from under him. The sound he makes as he hits the mat is extremely gratifying.

“Consider it this way,” he wheezes around Natasha’s knee on his chest, pressing down, “you don’t think Darcy is some kind of naïve baby who needs protecting, do you? The stuff you’re thinking – oh, I’m a superhero, this is no kind of life for her – she’s already considered that, and she’s decided to do what she’s doing. It’s your move.”

|

_Won’t know until you try_. 

Natasha can garrotte a man using only her thighs for balance. She can throw knives to a point-one-millimetre accuracy. And she can try.

She sends a text to ask Darcy to Tony’s benefit next week. It’s her move.

|

**epilogue**

“Lookin’ _good_ , Ms Romanov,” Darcy says, grinning, when she arrives on the common floor. Darcy’s dress is midnight blue, cut low over the shoulders, all the better to show the eye-wateringly valuable cluster of diamonds along her collarbone, loaned to her by Stark Industries (/…Pepper).

Natasha feels a helpless smile pulling at her mouth. She tamps it down into something respectable.

“Not so bad yourself,” she says, turning away to pick up her clutch. On her right, Steve is fussing over Bucky’s bowtie. Bucky is bearing it, by which Natasha means that his face looks about ready to actually melt off with affection.

“Don’t wait up, boys,” Natasha says to the rest of the team, voice all exaggerated, femme-fatale dark promise. Darcy shivers obviously, coming up beside Natasha to rest her hand in the crook of Natasha’s elbow. Bruce waves a cheerful hand at them and says _have fun_.

|

The next morning, Natasha is rage incarnate.

“ _Look at this_ ,” she says, brandishing the newspaper at Darcy. Darcy takes it from her and unfolds it to see a fuzzy shot of the two of them dancing at the benefit. Darcy’s hand is, _incredibly obviously_ , square on Natasha’s behind.

NEW GAL PALS ABOUT TOWN! squeals the headline. Darcy starts to laugh.

“Oh my god,” she says.

“There’s a photo of us kissing inside,” Natasha says. The funny side suddenly seems a lot funnier. “It’s a little out of focus, but that’s definitely what it is. And still, _nothing_.”

“Sorry, babe,” Darcy says. She thinks for a second, then offers, “we could call a press conference.”

Natasha looks at her, one eyebrow raised.

“No, seriously, hear me out,” Darcy says, waving her hands around. “I could bend you right back and kiss you like I’d just come back from sea. That would totally work. We could do it right on the steps in front of Avengers Tower. Or in front of the Empire State Building!”

Natasha is amused and charmed, despite herself.

“What makes you think _you’d_ be the one manhandling _me_?” she asks. Darcy looks sheepish.

“Um, I’m too top heavy,” she says, rueful. She points to her chest, as if worried she’s been too delicate. “Wouldn’t work. We might end up lying on the street, wouldn’t be very elegant." 

Natasha can’t help it, she snorts a laugh. 

“That might work _better_ ,” she points out. Darcy wiggles her eyebrows, and takes a lusty bite of her toast. 

| 

It takes the engagement announcement, almost a year later, for the press to properly catch on. Darcy and Natasha buy themselves the biggest, most ostentatious rings they can find, just to get the message across. Natasha spends a good two weeks with her left hand constantly in her hair, ring angled to catch the sunlight, every time she gets even a hint of a camera. 

It’s totally worth it. 


End file.
